If this is she of whom the world has heard,
Wonder no more at any happy change.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Synthesis is ontology

Consternation as regards publication of Record of
Yoga has been expressed from time to time and Kepler has put it quite succinctly. The way Agenda became
mainstream, Record, too, is likely to follow the same route. Like Lives, it has
already been published, and hence, instead of questioning it, better to accept
it as a part of The Mother’s mythology.

Sri Aurobindo’s extensive explications on Yoga
(including Savitri) are, basically, ontological in nature. The merit of their
study lies more in producing suppleness of intellect and expansion of
consciousness. This outcome, verily, is Yoga and not the actual techniques or sequences
that are elaborated in the text. No one’s personal growth proceeds exactly in
the same lines as propounded in the successive chapters.

But the fact that a mosaic of meta-narratives
inhabits the compass of Integral Yoga has a great utility in terms of offering
multiple options at various stages of life. My Y2K tryst with post-modernism,
for instance, has been a life-changing experience that helped me to see the writings
of The Mother & Sri Aurobindo not as frozen in time. It is quite possible
that after one amasses and archives all possible instructions on practice of
yoga, one will return to the bare minimum: remember and offer. [TNM55]